Not Your Average Home
by MickyRC
Summary: A weirdness in time an space sends people from the Whoniverse and the world of Sherlock Holmes into a parallel universe-and simultaneously ages them backwards! UNIT sends the kids to a foster home, where Janette Hyland must do her best to keep the peace among troublesome teenagers, warring eleven year olds, and child geniuses. Too many characters to list, including early Torchwood
1. Arrival Day

**AN: Super excited to be back writing! Just so you know, this chapter is rather long and not much happens. It's a set up chapter. More adventure to come! Also, I don't update regularly, and with all the other stuff I do, it may be a while between chapters. Finally, with this many characters, there won't be an overarching plot other than the utter chaos of the house. I've got a few interesting things in mind already for specific characters, but if you have any ideas, I'll run out sooner than later, so please, if you have a thought, share it! So without further ado...**

Arrival Day

Pushing her way through the foyer, doing her best not to step on shoes or luggage and failing miserably, Janette tried to keep herself from getting overwhelmed. All she wanted to do was make herself a cup of tea and sit down for a moment. Instead she was fighting through a sea of children just to get to the stairs.

Janette was seriously doubting her decision. She had been all day, but now was worse than ever. _Forty kids? What the hell was I thinking?_ she wondered. But really she knew what she had been thinking. Her foster home had been about to close. There just weren't enough kids left in the system after the Makellos drug scandal that left so many people infertile. Then there was the new strain of chicken pox that had cut a huge swathe through many of the orphanages in Asia and Africa, leading many would be parents to domestic foster homes. When she got the call from UNIT about taking on a few kids, she had jumped at the chance. Even when she learned how many there were, she decided to try it. UNIT had renovated her home, adding the next house over and another floor so there would be enough room for forty-three people to live comfortably. But she wasn't just uneasy about the number of kids. They weren't normal kids. Well that was fine, normal kids would bore her. But UNIT—who knew a frightening amount about everyone—didn't know who these kids were. They had all appeared in the highest security area of UNIT headquarters with no memory of how they'd gotten there—no memory at all, actually. Since then, UNIT had discovered that these kids had somehow travelled from parallel universes, and in the process had lost their memories. Some of the kids seemed fairly normal, except that they only remembered their names and ages, but others were… odd. What really scared her was that neither she nor UNIT knew how these oddities would manifest. What scared her was the not knowing part of this.

Finally she made it halfway up the steps and turned around, just to face a fresh wave of dread. Breathing the panic away, she raised her voice.

"Um, hey guys? Guys? Er, can you, maybe, you know, listen—"

"Hush!" barked a tall girl with massive, incredibly curly, honey brown hair. The room was instantly silent. This girl had authority; Janette would have to remember that.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," said the girl cheerfully.

Janette was suddenly very aware of all the people watching her. She had to sell this—if she didn't, she wouldn't have a chance of keeping them all under control.

"Oh, good lord there are a lot of you." She took a very deep breath. "Right then, I'm Miss Hyland. I will learn all of your names, but I can't learn them all in a day, so give me some time on that." She lifted her clipboard. It made her feel more official, even though she already knew all the information on it. "Now, room assignments. These are not permanent, I will move people around if there's an issue. On that note, if there is an issue, tell me. I can't help you if I don't know you need help. Um…" she looked up. "Who's the oldest?" The girl with the curly hair raised her hand immediately. "Hmm… second oldest?" There were some chuckles, and curly-hair smiled good-naturedly.

After a moment of muttering from the older kids, a strongly built boy with styled near-black hair and a cocky smile raised his hand.

"What's your name?" Janette asked him.

"Jack."

"And how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

Janette purposefully looked unconvinced, earning her a few more laughs. "Where are my fourteen and fifteen year olds?" A slew of hands went up this time. "How many of you were born in the autumn?" Most of the hands went down. "Any November babies?" Only one hand was left. "And what's your name?" she asked the pretty dark haired girl with her hand up.

"Gwen, miss."

"Everyone, Gwen's in charge. Gwen, don't let anyone touch anything, particularly each other." She addressed the group at large again. "The loo's down that way on the right. Tell Gwen before you go and come right back here. Got it?" There was a chorus of affirmatives, and Janette turned to her clipboard again. "Room one…. Yes?" A small boy at the back of the crowd had raised his hand.

"Oh, nothing, you were just about to call my name."

Janette tilted her head. "Was I?"

"Yes."

"And what makes you think that?"

"Well there's only one person here who can stand me, and obviously UNIT would have told you that. Chances are they decided to get our room out of the way first, and my name comes before John's alphabetically, so I'm first on the list."

"No, no, Sherlock," an older boy at the front interrupted. "Can't you see the paper?"

"No, I can't. You're up front, you can see more than I can."

"The paper is ordinary printer paper, not the sort UNIT uses, therefore she printed her own list. And she's a foster mother; she refers to people by their first names, therefore—"

"The list is alphabetical by first name?" a blonde boy who's shirt was slightly too small finished.

"Obviously," the two other boys said together, then glared at each other.

"Anyway," Janette said. "Would John Watson and Sherlock Holmes come up here, please?"

Sherlock and the blonde boy made their way through the crowd with their small suitcases and followed Janette up the stairs. They went up another two flights to the fourth floor attic, and Janette led the boys through a door to their room.

It was small and simple: white walls, two beds, a desk, a dresser, two chairs. "There's a toilet through there," Janette pointed to a door, "but the proper bathroom's on the second floor. There's a sign on the door, you should be able to find it. Any questions?"

"Can you ask the girls in the other room to try not to stay up too late so I can sleep?" Sherlock asked. Janette raised her eyebrow, prompting him to launch into an explanation of how the size difference between the rooms meant there was another loo on this floor and that meant girls on this floor. Janette waved him off after the first two sentences, saying she would leave the deducing to him. "Deducing?" Sherlock grinned. "That's what Mycroft calls it, but he says I'm not good enough to call it that yet."

"Well, if you can't call it deducing, I don't know who could. I'll come up later to check on you, okay?"

* * *

Back on the second floor, Janette gave herself a moment to breathe. That kid Sherlock was going to be a pain, she knew it, but at least he was entertaining. And John seemed like a sweetie, if he could ever break out of Sherlock's shadow. In the end though, they were both pretty young, only nine and ten years old, and Janette knew how to work with kids that age and younger. It was the older ones she was worried about. Well, the sooner they were all in their rooms, the sooner she would have a moment to herself.

Returning to her spot halfway down the steps, she called the next group of names. "Amelia Pond, Donna Noble, Mary Morstan, and Michelle… I don't have a last name there."

"I don't have a last name," a girl with dark hair knotted in an old fashioned style, presumably Michelle, said. "And I prefer 'Missy,' if you don't mind." The other three girls in room two were smiling, apparently excited to be rooming together.

"Two red-heads in one room?"

"Yup," the red-heads said together. The stouter of them had a strong London accent, while the taller had a faint but clear Scottish one.

"You two know I'm never going to figure out which of you is Donna and which is Mary, right?"

"I'm Mary," said the girl with close cropped platinum blonde hair.

"Oh, here we go." Janette said, and the girls laughed. She brought them up to their room on the second floor and showed them the bathroom across the hall, then went back downstairs for the next group.

"Adam Mitchell, Gregory Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, and Peter." The boy who had ridiculed Sherlock earlier, an older boy with prematurely silver hair, a younger boy with an unusual scar on his forehead, and a rather lost looking boy with a permanent frown came up. They were also on the second floor, right next door to room two. Janette hadn't bothered renumbering her list when she had assigned rooms, so the numbers really didn't make sense anymore.

The next group was smaller, just three girls who were to live on the attic floor with Sherlock and John. These girls Janette knew she wouldn't mix up. One had dyed-blonde hair, another creamed-coffee coloured skin and curly black hair who asked to be called by her last name, and the third pale skin and wavy dark brown hair. After that was a group of older boys, including the strong boy who was second oldest and whose name she had already forgotten. They all started high-fiving and cheering as their names were called. They were the first people on the third floor, and once they were there, Janette stopped walking and turned to face them.

"You should know, I've been warned about you boys."

"What for?" A boy with very short hair and a very thick northern accent asked.

"Wandering about UNIT headquarters in the middle of the night? Really?"

A black boy spoke up. "How do you know about that? We weren't caught."

Raising an eyebrow, Janette said, "Do you really think you wouldn't have been caught if they hadn't known you were out of your room?" She turned and kept walking. "I appreciate mischief, really I do, but I do not appreciate stupidity." She held the door for them as they walked into the room. She gave her spiel about the loo, and as she was leaving, turned back. "Don't be stupid." Then she closed the door behind her and went to get the next group.

"Christina de Souza, Irene Adler, Jenifer Flint—"

"Jenny, please," a girl from the crowd called out.

Janette smiled. "Jenny Flint, and Martha Jones."

Once these girls were in their third floor room, she called a room of five younger boys. She could tell this room was going to be trouble. It seemed that UNIT had put those most likely to be annoying all in one room. With the exception of a dark skinned boy named Rupert Pink who requested he be called Danny for no apparent reason, they all managed to get on Janette's nerves in the short time it took her to lead them to the second floor. For the first time she was relieved to go back to the foyer.

The next group of girls all looked vaguely alike, with pale skin and dark brown hair, which Janette knew would confuse her. It included Gwen, but she decided that since there were so few kids left and most of them were older, they would manage without someone specifically in charge. After that was a room of three rather shy boys, who looked like they would get along well.

The next room was a big one: "Petronella Osgood, Oswin, River Song, Toshiko Sato, and Vastra." Janette led them up to their room, but once there found that there was a problem. There were only five beds, and six girls. "Now how did that happen?" Janette wondered aloud. She checked her list. There should only be five of you." She looked up and frowned. "Wait. You in the blue sweater." The girls all looked at her as if she'd gone mad. Then she remembered that _all_ of the kids were wearing blue sweaters over button-up shirts and tan pants. "Sorry. _You_." she pointed at a girl with pale skin, dark, wavy hair, and big brown eyes. "Didn't I already put you in a room?"

"That was Clara," all the girls said at once.

"Clara?"

"Yeah," the girl in question said.

"We've got two girls who look exactly the same?"

"I'm older," not-Clara said.

"But otherwise, yeah, two girls who look exactly the same," said River, who turned out to be the oldest girl who had first shushed everyone.

"Actually, there are two sets of identical girls." said a girl with slanted cheekbones and dark flowing hair with an almost greenish tinge.

Janette's face fell. It just kept getting more complicated.

"Hi," said a small voice behind her. Turning, she saw two _absolutely identical_ ten year olds. They had dark brown hair pulled back in identical ponytails, indistinguishable blocky black glasses, and matching, shy stances, hands clasped behind their backs.

"And what are your names?"

"Osgood." They said together.

"Both of you are Osgood?"

"Mhm."

Janette sighed. "We'll add a bunk bed here. One of you will need to sleep on a cot tonight, though. Everyone good?"

There was a murmur of assent, and Janette left the room. _One kid left. One kid left_. She went back downstairs, hopefully for the last time that day. Then she looked into the foyer.

There were two kids there.

Janette couldn't hold back her disappointment. "Why are there two of you?"

The two boys looked up at her.

"Why shouldn't there be two of us?" the one with seriously gelled light brown hair asked.

"Cause I've only got one more name on my list!"

"What name?" both boys asked at once. They then glared at each other with such venom that Janette decided then and there to keep them apart as much as physically possible.

"John," she read off the list. "Just… John."

"That's me," they both said, and this time they started arguing heatedly instead of just shooting eye-daggers.

"Hey!" Janette shouted, shutting them both up. "I don't care if you don't like each other, that's okay, but there are other people in this house, so I need you to keep whatever feud you're having civil. Got it?"

"Got it," the brown-haired kid said, while the other boy, who was blonde, grumbled something incoherent Janette decided to assume was an "okay."

"Now then, what are your names?"

"David."

"Harry."

Janette blinked. "Neither of you are called John?"

"Sort of…."

"Technically…."

"Which of you would UNIT call John?"

David, the brunette, pointed at the other kid. Janette turned to him. "You're John?"

"Yeah."

"We're sure?"

"Yeah."

She turned to David. "So you're not on my list?"

"Apparently not."

She sighed. "Stay here. I'm gonna have to call Kate. You: John or Harry or whatever. This way." She led John/Harry down the hall and through the expanded living room to the second first floor bedroom. "Bathroom's around that corner. If you ever need anything at night, I'm in the room right across the living room. Now I have to go deal with David. Or John, or whatever he's called."

The boy snickered as Janette headed back to the front of the house. She peered into the foyer to check on What's-His-Name, and found him studying a print on her wall. She found it a bit odd that an eleven year-old would be so fascinated by a less than impressive print of an only slightly more impressive painting, but he seemed to be entertained and he wasn't touching anything, which was all Janette wanted.

She turned back to go into the dining room, facing yet another wave of fear at the massive dining table that filled the room. She had insisted on one table for everyone to avoid cliques forming for as long as possible, but seeing the enormous block of wood, she realized that it wouldn't help much. There was no way she would be able to keep an eye on the far end of the table, much less effectively stop them from excluding others.

Moving on into the kitchen, she managed to calm herself down. The kitchen was largely unchanged, just expanded on one side to match the dining room wall. The extra space was filled with counters that Janette wasn't entirely sure what to do with. But with so many kids in one house, she was sure she would need more space sooner or later. Probably sooner.

Sitting down in one of her worn wooden chairs, Janette pulled out her mobile. She tapped the emergency option on the lock screen and then an icon with the UNIT logo on it. UNIT had programed her phone so that she could call them without ever seeing the number she was calling. She didn't entirely understand it, but it worked, so she didn't mind. Well, no, she did mind, but she wasn't about to storm into UNIT about her mobile.

The phone rang only half a tone before it was picked up. "Osgood here," said the voice on the other side.

"There's a kid not on my list."

"What?"

"There's a kid standing in my foyer who's not on my list!"

"What's their name?"

"David. Or John, maybe, I'm really not sure at this point."

Osgood chuckled. "It's David. When the children started to remember their names, some remembered more than others. At least five remembered being called John as well as something else."

"So he should be here?"

"Yes. He must have been missed when we made the list. Sorry about that."

Janette sighed. She didn't have the energy to complain. "'S okay. Thanks." She hung up.

"Right, somehow you just didn't get on the list," she said as she went back into the foyer. "I think there's an extra bed in room nine. It's up here." She led the boy upstairs and knocked on the door of room nine. The three boys already there looked up as they walked in. There was, in fact, an extra bed, though it seemed to have been claimed as an extra shelf already. None of the other boys seemed happy about David joining them, and Janette could see why. The kid was fun, but the others were all quiet, shy types, which he most definitely was not. Oh well. If she had to move someone, she had to move someone.

Janette moved back through the finally empty foyer and into the kitchen to make her cup of tea. Now she had the next adventure to look forward to: dinner.


	2. End Note

**Right, so, I'm very unhappy with this. I just really, really don't like the writing. So, the bad news: I'll be deleting it soon. The good news: I'm rewriting it! Same basic premise, only now I'm going to include Supernatural and Merlin. And it's going to have stronger writing. So stay tuned for that, but know that this won't be here in a few weeks.**


End file.
